CENSORED!

[athanasios]

Yeah, that's what happened to my posts and above all I was accused by a certain mod that I threatened the forums and some of the members and consequently temporary banned.

Since I do not wish to go long on this and since I received no answer as to why should I, and how I committed such a 'crime' against the forums and whom I threatened, the logical conclusion is that the forums and some were threatened due to my enlightening posts. Added to this, the current emetic posts of some members who wish to mold the PRP section to their desires and exclude all those who disagree with their shortsighted conservative views (sorry Edric O, but that's the truth) I have come to the following decision:

I will refrain from posting to the PRP section till quite a number of serious, respectful and open minded members start posting actively there.

Actually I consider my posts in dune2k PRP section as a big waste of my precious time with only a few benefits. I have already started offering my services where thousands of people really benefit from my posts and are thankful to other's contributions and efforts. Anyway a revolution has already started here in the cradle of civilization and we are very busy to worry about what the demised colonies think about.

Disclaimer: This doesn't mean that I will refrain from posting in other sub forums. I have nothing against the d2k forums, and that's the main reason I consider the 'threat' accusation illogical: How can you bite the hand that is feeding you? I repeat again that the sole reason I first joined here was Dune 2000, and other Dune games-at that time I didn't even notice there existed a PRP section. To me for the role of a Dune Universe game forum, d2k is covering all my expectations and I 'll stick to that.

NOTE: Feel free to reply at will, but do not expect me to reply to your posts. As it is already the case with some other members of these forums if you wish to discuss PRP with me please contact me only through PM or my email. Thanks.

regards

athanasios

[Dante]

This was both inevitable and hilarious.

[Wolf]

I actually didn't think it was--to be honest, I thought he had more self-control.

For the record, any post that begins with "I won't go on long" and then continues to go on long, is clearly going to be hilariously livid rambling. The really funny thing, though, is that Eras & Curt think we're too liberal, and Ath thinks we're too conservative! I guess when the whackjobs on both sides are criticizing you, it means you're right.

No, but he really needs help. Professional help.

[Andrew]

and since I received no answer

You tried contacting mods after banned? Didn't notice anything.

When you posted in prp issues thread:

No dudes you will never silence us. You have already failed. Even if you could take control of the forums and permanently ban us you would be 'making a hole in the water' You cannot shut or mouths neither those of many more to come. That I can guarantee to you. We have a mission: to awaken the masses. We will not fail it! Your World of deception is already falling apart.

First sentence: Not sure if referring to Greece protestors (not sure why you would), I assumed you meant yourself and others supporting your view. I took this as tempting mods into silencing you (as in saying that mods are powerless to silence you or others).

Second sentence: Mods already failed?

Third sentence: Banning anyone will be bad for forum.

Fourth sentence: If someone banned more like the person banned will arrive at forum.

Fifth Sentence: You guarantee bad things will happen if banned.

Rest of post: not sure what to think.

At same time you created yet another thread: "The Greek Dictators fill with Blood the Streets of Athens ". Really the streets were filled with blood? Another over the top headline for a thread that could have gone into another one of your threads.

In "Osama bin Laden is dead" thread you posted a link and copy/pasted the entire link in quotes. There was no need for this (considered spam).

[TheCurtOne]

Wolf, careful with the label of whackjob. Not crazy about the way you throw words around. ath, you do some good in the world, here & everywhere. We can all learn from each other.

[Wolf]

"You do some good in the world?"--"We can all learn from each other?" Can we get an IP check on Curt cross-referenced with Eras, please?

[Edric O]

I did that ages ago, Wolf. They're completely different. And Curt is right. Ath didn't really do anything wrong, except the one thing for which he got his temp ban.

Athanasios, rest assured that a temporary ban is precisely that and nothing more. If you choose to post in PRP again, no one will censor your posts.

[Wolf]

Much appreciated. I didn't bring it up to be a nag--I think even you have to admit that that was... startlingly similar language? In any case, Ath may have only done one thing that was egregiously wrong, but he did it consistently for most of his time posting on PRP. And he was never censored. All of his posts remain in their entirety. He was simply muted for two weeks. That's also an important distinction.

[arnoldo]

Yeah, that's what happened to my posts and above all I was accused by a certain mod that I threatened the forums and some of the members and consequently temporary banned.

Since I do not wish to go long on this and since I received no answer as to why should I, and how I committed such a 'crime' against the forums and whom I threatened, the logical conclusion is that the forums and some were threatened due to my enlightening posts. Added to this, the current emetic posts of some members who wish to mold the PRP section to their desires and exclude all those who disagree with their shortsighted conservative views (sorry Edric O, but that's the truth) I have come to the following decision:

I will refrain from posting to the PRP section till quite a number of serious, respectful and open minded members start posting actively there.

Actually I consider my posts in dune2k PRP section as a big waste of my precious time with only a few benefits. I have already started offering my services where thousands of people really benefit from my posts and are thankful to other's contributions and efforts. Anyway a revolution has already started here in the cradle of civilization and we are very busy to worry about what the demised colonies think about.

Disclaimer: This doesn't mean that I will refrain from posting in other sub forums. I have nothing against the d2k forums, and that's the main reason I consider the 'threat' accusation illogical: How can you bite the hand that is feeding you? I repeat again that the sole reason I first joined here was Dune 2000, and other Dune games-at that time I didn't even notice there existed a PRP section. To me for the role of a Dune Universe game forum, d2k is covering all my expectations and I 'll stick to that.

NOTE: Feel free to reply at will, but do not expect me to reply to your posts. As it is already the case with some other members of these forums if you wish to discuss PRP with me please contact me only through PM or my email. Thanks.

regards

athanasios

I'd agree with pretty much everything that you said but I'm afraid doing so would violate the rules.

[Dragoon Knight]

[colour=#005FFF]Seriously, put a monitor in front of Gene there and that's pretty much me when reading the original post in this thread... and again now that arnoldo has contributed.

It never ceases to amuse me when small-minded people with an inferiority complex think that the world is out to get them. It's a nice way to blame all your failings on something other than yourself. Sure, there's some validity in saying "Screw the banks for messing up the economy! Now I can't get a job!", but there are limits. ath was temporarily banned for a short period of time, for good reasons, and was in no way censored. Unfortunately, since he has delusions of grandeur on a scale rarely seen among the sane, he took this as being verification of everything he believes. "Look, look! They've banned me! They're suppressing my free speech!"

What was that Monty Python sketch again? I'm sure it was in Holy Grail...

Ah, here we go.

. :D[/colour]

[Lord J]

Athanasios, rest assured that a temporary ban is precisely that and nothing more. If you choose to post in PRP again, no one will censor your posts.

Erm, Edric, I appreciate your point of view and all, but the man was posting pages of links at a time and copy/pasting posts entirely in Greek. I cannot read Greek, and I have little interest in the language. Most of all, this is an English-speaking forum, and posting in other languages (without the slightest effort to translate) is very specifically against forum rules (or, at least, it was at one time). Essentially, Ath was using this board as his personal Greek resistance blog, not for discussion, but just as a way to repost things he thought was interesting or important. At the very least he is guilty of a betrayal of the social atmosphere of this board.

[TheCurtOne]

"Guilty of a betrayal of the social atmosphere of this board"?

"Guilty of a betrayal of the social atmosphere of this board"?

What does that mean? That is a pretty high standard to try to maintain. I mean, were not all southern gentlemen sitting around on the veranda drinking sweet iced tea and mint julips, talking about the cotton harvest. There is going to be some conflicts, some fighting, and some language barriers. Anyway, I just want to go on board that I am against censorship and banning, even if it is temporary. Athanasius, I'm here if you ever want to talk about how the banks are out to get us, and I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to convince "you know who" to stay away, even though he should be focusing on his kids for a bit.

[Andrew]

Anyway, I just want to go on board that I am against censorship and banning, even if it is temporary.

Then your not going to like this messageboard. In fact you probably won't enjoy any messageboard. Everyone does it and for good reason. Trolls/spammers get banned all the time on the internet. It's much easier to ban than to have to deal with bullshit on a daily basis.

I'm not talking about this board or ath ban specifically, but the internet as a whole and every other messageboard I've seen does it. If you want no censorship or banning then feel free to go to a 4chan type board where anything goes.

Not trying to pick on your statement, but if you think that any censoring or banning under any circumstance is wrong, it would lead to anarchy.

[Lord J]

Curt: What I'm getting at (which should be obvious given the context of my statement), is that ath treated this board not as a web forum but as a blog, and as such, did not engage in behavior that produced discussion. The purpose of a web forum is to discuss things, anything. Ath was not interested in discussion, therefore he betrayed the social atmosphere of this board.

I think one of the real problems with modern philosophical/political discussion is the bumper-sticker phenomenon: Everyone has an opinion, and they are so very happy to shove it down your throat, but if you scratch at the surface of that opinion, there's nothing there except a general appreciation for a slogan or reverence to some authority. They are not prepared to defend their perspective, only repeat it to the point of nausea (see what I did there? ;) ) and ignore well reasoned, but opposing, opinions. Or even worse, in relation to the Ath phenomenon, babble endlessly and spam a public forum with unoriginal opinion and gibberish with no interest in discussion (with no points of discussion, in fact). And it wouldn't have been so bad if he had kept it to one, specific thread. But instead he spewed it across the entire board, much like a similar individual we all know and remember.

I think "S/He is acting like an ath" should become a new meme for this forum.

[Wolf]

Well, the worst part, in my view, was that if you attempted to challenge him on his opinion, he insulted you. That was literally adding insult to injury, and that was the catalyst for the "PRP Issues" thread, which, I will shamelessly plug, is starting to become the very model of reasoned disagreement. Notice there that Edric and I challenge each other, and the challenges result in clarifications of both parties' points (mostly mine).

I think one of the real problems with modern philosophical/political discussion is the bumper-sticker phenomenon: Everyone has an opinion, and they are so very happy to shove it down your throat, but if you scratch at the surface of that opinion, there's nothing there except a general appreciation for a slogan or reverence to some authority.

And a car.

[TheCurtOne]

Lord J, I know you speak in semi-jest about he or she is like ath, so I do not choose to dwell upon it. I understand that this is a forum, of course, but topics that are presented can lead to different types of viewpoints. It's true, ath has a viewpoint that is unique to those are living in Greece, hey, their economy is collapsing, and so is their way of life. So he should be allowed a certain amount of frustration and venting in English. But to be honest, there were some good topics presented during this Spring especially about the Mid-East, and I see some serious silence by those upset with him and EO.

As far as the bumper sticker mentality goes, hey, I have only been around for a couple of weeks and I would like to see things loosen up a bit. But I could just be out of place, hope not. Maybe some more "current event" type of postings. Just a thought.

[Wolf]

... but topics that are presented can lead to different types of viewpoints.

This can only happen if (1) the person posting some link or news item also posts their own perspective so debate can occur, and (2) if the original poster actually converses with respondents. You can't just drop a link and leave it at that or ignore respondents when they choose to comment. Ath did all of that. That's against the rules. He also posted in Greek. That's also against the rules. If you want to vent or just shoot the breeze, there's the General board. That's my take, maybe a mod can clarify what I've said.

[TheCurtOne]

I've looked through some of ath's postings earlier, and there are some goodies to be sure. The posting about James Watson speaking at the Greek college could have been thoroughly thrashed out in an even more full way. That's why I am going to put in a plug for my creator intervening brand of evolution, it weeds out the Watsons of this world. No mad scientist view of life so that we can get into fetal stem cell "research" because a creator has intervened in Earth's destiny, or Watson's view that black people of color are less intelligent than white people.

[Dante]

Now hang on a moment, that's a complete non-sequiter. Stem cells, racism and evolution don't have any of the connections you seem to be implying. It makes as much sense to say that a belief in homeopathy protects one from alien abduction: not only are the subjects unrelated, the conclusion would be unsupportable even if they were.

As I said before, if you want to talk science in another thread, I would be happy to do so. You're labouring under some misapprehensions which I would gladly help to dispel. But as I said to eras on more than one occasion, please don't draw conclusions from things you don't appear to understand. It's unwise.

[TheCurtOne]

What I mean is that when the creator intervenes in evolution, it's because of a plan, that it's not all willy-nilly and free chance. Pretty sure Watson doesn't believe in deistic evolution so he probably pretty much thinks he can do whatever in #ell he wants like supporting fetal stem cell research, and believing that black people are inferior. You're right, this has nothing to do with censorship, though.

[Dante]

No, you misunderstand me. There is no pertinant connection between the subjects you are talking about, i.e. stem cell research, evolution and racism. No connection. Pas de connexion. Keine Verbindung. Ingen ruter. Ni povezave. Hakuna uhusiano. No connection. That you seem to think that there is a connection implies that your understanding of all three subjects is flawed, and my offer was to help you realise these flaws. That we currently happen to be off topic as well is immaterial.

Clearer?

[TheCurtOne]

You can speak all of those languages? I think knowing there is an overriding purpose, "someone watching over" the whole shebang of evolution, gives us boundaries to work in. Fetal stem cell research gives me the creeps, and Watson's wrong racial views could lead to Hitler's wrong racial views, although Hitler quoted from "Providence" a whole #elluva lot. People who say Hitler was agnostic are missing the boat on him, cause it's clear he believed in God.

[Dante]

No, again you misunderstand. Fortunately, you have not yet exhausted my goodwill as you have Wolf's, so I'm prepared to do a bit of extra legwork to make the point clear. And, because I'm just a lovely person, I shall do it with the aid of HANDY DANDY DIAGRAMS.

Talkative Johnny: Evolution leads to racism because evolutionists will think that some people are "more evolved" than others.

Dante: That's not how evolution works.

It's a common misconception that evolution (by natural selection) works towards a particular goal ("a bird evolved to have wings, man evolved to be intelligent"), or is constantly improving. It does not. Natural selection is blind. What it does, broadly speaking, is enhance the most beneficial traits of a species in the environment that the species inhabits over a period of time best measured in generations. This has not "improved" the species, it has simply adjusted it better relative to its environment.

Does spending millions of years evolving make a species "better?" No. There are species around today that have been successful for millions of years with only minimal adjustments to their form (dragonflies, sharks and horseshoe crabs to name but three). Further, what is "better?" Is it better to have legs? Then why did snakes and whales lose them? Is it better to have eyes? Then why did cave fish lose them? Natural selection does not constantly improve, it constantly adapts.

I'll take a favourite example of mine. Whales.

We'll start at the beginning and go quickly. The fossil record indicates that life probably started in the sea, certainly that's where the first chordates (creatures with backbones) appeared. The early chordates became the first fish, the fish moved onto the land and became amphibians. The amphibians did something really interesting and split, some becoming reptiles and some becoming mammals. Note that just because this happened does not mean that fish or amphibians disappeared.

With me so far? The important point here, listen carefully now, is that all mammals evolved on land. No mammal evolved from amphibians in the sea.

Now, having come so far, the mammals started branching out into different forms. The earliest form that we recognise as an ancestor to the whales was a carnivorous ungulate. Think like... a dog with cow's feet. It's close enough. This animal had legs, lungs, fur and all the familiar mammalian jazz.

This early mammal started hunting in watery, possibly swampy environments (the world was much warmer at the time, there were more swamps around). In an environment like that it's obviously beneficial to be able to live in water, which would lead to small yet useful developments, such as webbing between splayed digits, the ability to hear in water and a method of moving the spine to swim with minimal effort. If you consider species alive today in a similar environment, you find that they follow a similar pattern. Otters retain much of their land-dwelling strengths, while crocodiles do not, sea lions have less, and seals have sacrificed almost all of their terrestrial ability in exchange for formidable aquatic presence.

Once they reached the sea, there was no going back. Hind legs, now a burden, were done away with. The tail developed flukes for propulsion and the nose migrated to the top of the head to ensure easy breathing. The whales arrived.

Why did I go through all of that? To illustrate the following points:

> natural selection is blind: did this early animal set off into the water with the goal of becoming a whale? Not in the slightest. It wandered onto a path with its eyes shut and kept going, always taking the best turning at the time. Becoming a whale was the result of serendipity, not intent.

> natural selection has no plan: it would have been much simpler never to leave the sea, instead they left the sea, adapted to the land with legs and lungs and whatnot, then went back into the sea, where they now have to deal with having to surface to breathe and being unable to drink saltwater.

> just because something has spent millions of years evolving does not mean that it is superior. Sharks, which never left the oceans, are much better adapted to live in them. They can filter salt out of seawater, stay submerged indefinately, do not suffer from air pressure issues, can lay eggs rather than birthing live young... All useful things in the sea which whales lack.

Now racism. Consider the phrase "white people are more evolved" in the context of the above illustration of evolution.

It doesn't. Make. Sense. More evolved? So what? That's not necessarily better, nor necessarily true. Can it be demonstrated? What did they evolve for? It wouldn't be much cop if they evolved to be better tapdancers, would it? Snakes evolved to lose their legs, what have we evolved to lose?

Now try "white people evolved to be more intelligent."

That at least has a clear point, but is it provable? Can it be demonstrated, statistically analysed free of influencing factors such as income disparity? In short, even if there were a difference in intelligence between white and black people (and to my knowledge, no credible study suggests this), it would be another issue entirely to show that the difference was evolutionary and not societal. There is, in short, no evidence.

A belief in evolution (and disbelief in god) no more leads to racism than a belief in Krishna leads to getting fat.

Further reading, if interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cetaceans

Well... how do I follow that?

Talkative Johnny: Evolution would say that foetal stem cell research is ok!

Dante: I... ok, that makes even less sense than the last statement.

TJ: Evolution has a plan. If it doesn't, it's all down to chance, then anything goes. There's no rules, no moral compass.

D: ...I see.

Well, as shown above, evolution doesn't have a plan. But you're using that to make a point with no logical steps. How does the gradual change of lifeforms over generations relate to cellular research? If evolution by natural selection weren't true, we'd still have stem cells and we'd still need to study them.

Cutting to the chase, this is less an issue about evolution than it is personal distaste in a particular practice. You don't like foetal stem cell research, you don't know how or why it works, so you wedge it into another issue in order to perpetuate the "us and them" scenario whereby the people who conduct said research can be pigeonholed into "not like us."

I'll go into some details, but this will be more brief than the above as cell biology was never my area of interest.

Stem cells are so called because they are the "blank" cells that can become any other cell in the body (liver, heart, muscle, nerve, etc). Once a cell has a role, it cannot be reversed. That's why cells don't migrate to change purpose, they get broken down and their parts recycled instead. Stem cells would therefore be very useful if they could be controlled. Imagine being able to regrow nerve tissue, healing spinal injuries. Or regenerate myelin sheaths, rendering Alzheimer's a thing of the past.

But the thing is, adult stem cells are not as powerful as foetal ones. They already have a "role," sort of, and cannot do as much as foetal cells can. If you think about it, this makes sense. An adult isn't growing anything new, they only repair what is already present. Foetuses have the busy job of first growing and then organising muscle tissue, heart tissue, lung tissue, nerve tissue, skin tissue, all that jazz.

Foetal stem cells have much greater potential. They have significantly more possible applications. It only makes sense to work on them rather than adult stem cells, which are useful still but relatively circumscribed.

What does this mean? Well, it brings us into more philosophical than scientific territory. Is the ability to heal currently crippling injuries worth the cost of thousands of non-lives? A 15 year old paralysed from the neck down could recover, regain the quality of live they knew. The collections of cells used in research not only never knew quality of life, they never knew life full stop. They never knew anything. Their brains aren't developed to the point where knowledge of anything is even possible.

But this is beside the point. Whether or not one agrees with stem cell research, it isn't justified through "evolution says it's ok," it's justified by human interest. If you want to get into scientific ethics then be my guest, but that's a somewhat bigger topic than simply natural selection.

I'm actually getting quite tired of this. You know how long it takes me to write these things? And it's so very rarely worth the effort. I could have been playing minecraft!

Talkative Johnny: Watson's racism (which he can believe in thanks to godless evolution) could become Hitler's racism!

You make my brain hurt.

Alright, last lap, lets clear this up.

Racism comes in many forms. At its core it is the belief that differences between people can be explained entirely by their skin colour. One can expand on this to say that racism is treating people differently depending on their skin colour (amusingly, by this definition eras is a racist. I actually like calling him "eracist," but the moderators told me to stop. I find that a bit unfair, as it's just a statement of verifiable fact, but whatever). Nevertheless, the many behaviours covered by this umbrella term are not entirely compatible, and one need not lead to another.

You've brought the wrath of Godwin down upon us anyway, but allow me to start with a different example. As I said to another poster here not long ago, apartheid South Africa is a good example of institutionalised racism that was not based on hate. Apartheid was patronising, humiliating, monstrously unfair and undeniably racist, but it was based on the belief that black people were simple, not evil. White South Africans believed their black counterparts were childlike, unable to properly look after themselves and in need of firm guidance in order to ensure they made the best of themselves. They were also well aware that their own prosperity depended very much on having a huge pool of labour to draw on. Their attitude was paternalistic, treating adults like children. Do you let children hold political office? Do you punish them when they get out of line? Do you let them mix with adults? That was apartheid. My argument here, just to clarify, is not that apartheid was "not bad, all things considered." It was bad. My argument is that apartheid, as gross a breach of human rights as it was, was motivated by good intentions. "Good neighbourliness," as it was said.

Ok, now lets give Godwin a real apoplexy and segue into the holocaust.

Hitler's final solution was not intended to consider the best interests of those it slaughtered, it was intended as a deliberate extinction. It was motivated not by vanity, greed or condecision, but loathing and misplaced revenge. It was, in short, a completely different manifestation of racism, with completely different causes and symptoms.

You argue that racism like Watson's (and apartheid South Africa's) could lead to something like the holocaust.

I disagree. Why? Because, while both were racist, they're otherwise very different. The logical jump between "X people are inferior" and "X people MUST DIE" is a bit bigger than you think. I think that otters are cuter than elephants (speciesist!), that doesn't mean I want to wipe the Earth clean of elephantine ugliness.

What I'm saying, basically, is that Hitler was racist but not all racists are Hitler.

...and I'm done. For now.

It kind of petered out toward the end there, didn't it? Ah well. Point made, sort of. I hope the point got through all those words. That's the argument we could have been having. Details, connections... I'm rambling now. It's late, I'm tired, we're done here. I look forward to... whatever.

Oh, and no, I don't speak any of those languages. Can get by in German, but really I just hate repeating myself, so I ran it through Google translate a few times for variety. The Norwegian one is a bit off, but otherwise I'm quite pleased with it.

[TheCurtOne]

Okay, I get it. Good diagrams. I was jumping to conclusions. Are those characters from "Invader Zim"?

[arnoldo]

No, again you misunderstand. Fortunately, you have not yet exhausted my goodwill as you have Wolf's, so I'm prepared to do a bit of extra legwork to make the point clear. And, because I'm just a lovely person, I shall do it with the aid of HANDY DANDY DIAGRAMS.

I have to agree with you that there is no more direct correlation between the items you diagrammed (Evolution > Atheism > Stem Cell Research) than for instance Christianity and burning witches, slavery, etc. Any ideology whether it is theistic or atheistic can be used for good or bad depending upon the person or society embracing a particular worldview. There are many arguments for religious fundamentalism being a negative force in the world so it should come as no surprise that an atheistic ideology (in the wrong hands) can be a negative force as well. In a short, highly readable 12 page essay entitled, A Christian Analysis of Atheism ,Frederick B. Meekins presents some arguments against atheistic ideology. One point which I disagree with Meekins is his argument that the universe required a “first cause” in order to exist and that this implies that God exists as well. IMHO, Mortimer J Adler “proved” that God exists not due to the universe requiring a first cause, rather that the universe is radically contingent and requires God as an efficient cause for it’s continued existence.

God

In his 1981 book How to Think About God, Adler attempts to demonstrate God as the exnihilator [the creator of something from nothing][3] of the cosmos. The steps taken to demonstrate this are as follows:

1. The existence of an effect requiring the concurrent existence and action of an efficient cause implies the existence and action of that cause

2. The cosmos as a whole exists

3. The existence of the cosmos as a whole is radically contingent (meaning that it needs an efficient cause of its continuing existence to preserve it in being, and prevent it from being annihilated, or reduced to nothing)

4. If the cosmos needs an efficient cause of its continuing existence, then that cause must be a supernatural being, supernatural in its action, and one the existence of which is uncaused, in other words, the Supreme Being, or God

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortimer_J._Adler

I'll take a favourite example of mine. Whales.

We'll start at the beginning and go quickly. The fossil record indicates that life probably started in the sea, certainly that's where the first chordates (creatures with backbones) appeared. The early chordates became the first fish, the fish moved onto the land and became amphibians. The amphibians did something really interesting and split, some becoming reptiles and some becoming mammals. Note that just because this happened does not mean that fish or amphibians disappeared.

With me so far? The important point here, listen carefully now, is that all mammals evolved on land. No mammal evolved from amphibians in the sea.

Now, having come so far, the mammals started branching out into different forms. The earliest form that we recognise as an ancestor to the whales was a carnivorous ungulate. Think like... a dog with cow's feet. It's close enough. This animal had legs, lungs, fur and all the familiar mammalian jazz.

This early mammal started hunting in watery, possibly swampy environments (the world was much warmer at the time, there were more swamps around). In an environment like that it's obviously beneficial to be able to live in water, which would lead to small yet useful developments, such as webbing between splayed digits, the ability to hear in water and a method of moving the spine to swim with minimal effort. If you consider species alive today in a similar environment, you find that they follow a similar pattern. Otters retain much of their land-dwelling strengths, while crocodiles do not, sea lions have less, and seals have sacrificed almost all of their terrestrial ability in exchange for formidable aquatic presence.

Once they reached the sea, there was no going back. Hind legs, now a burden, were done away with. The tail developed flukes for propulsion and the nose migrated to the top of the head to ensure easy breathing. The whales arrived.

Regarding the evolutionary journey of whales this can perhaps offer a glimmer of hope to mankind’s continued survival on earth. For example, if global warming were to eventually raise sea levels, this could lead to the collapse of civilization as we know it. Once mankind finds itself in the same primitive state it found itself millions of years ago mankind will have to adapt itself to a radically different environment. For example if land masses went under water and the remaining land was mostly marshes then naturally humans would adapt to such an environment. Additionally, if the ozone layer was damaged due to pollution this could increase the levels or radiation entering the earth’s atmosphere possibly contributing to an increased mutation rate upon mankind. Under such as scenario it would not be out of the question that a mutation (s) involving webbed feet and hands would arise enabling humans to transition back to a water environment.